As you might have noticed, this comic is a day late and that was simply because of work and an advanced deadline of the accountant due to the holidays. So, the comic was bumped one day, sorry!

I’ve always steered clear from playing 18xx games, hearing from Heinze and friends that it easily took five to six hours and people sat at the table using calculators and even spreadsheets to keep track of what was happening on the board. Nothing about that sounds very appealing to me so whenever they have an 18XX day planned, I just have a day to myself (which is not too shabby either ;-)) But the ’18xx’ group has been asking when I and a friend are joining them and finally play our first 18xx game and… we might have said yes. So, that’s happening this month! We’ll see if it’s the experience that I think/fear it will be… or maybe I’ll like it? I will let you know in a few weeks!

Even though last week was about a 60-hour work week, we did play some games! We started the week by playing another game of Maul Peak and we’re still very much charmed by the concept of the game! Playing as the bears (heroes) that have to defeat the guardian is a tricky thing to do as you have to accept you’ll be taking heavy losses on your way to climb the guardian before you can start doing damage and limiting the Guardian player’s actions. We still need to start playing it with one of the other guardians that come with the game and see if that makes it even harder for the heroes or just harder for the Guardian player due to the higher complexity rating.

We also got a surprise package from the Dutch publisher 999Games containing Sky Team and two games from their new solo puzzle series, the Flex Puzzler and Cat Stax (originally published by Huch & Friends). I’ll be honest that I think that the Flex Puzzler has a fun concept but it’s almost impossible to make puzzles complicated. I found little difference in difficulty between puzzles 40 and 80 (which is the last one) so that was slightly disappointing. I think I’ve spent about an hour solving all the 80 challenges. Cat Stax seems more of an actual puzzle because it’s about fitting pieces to a grid but I haven’t tried that one yet. We’re looking forward to trying Sky Team since we haven’t played it since we played the prototype back in 2022 in Essen!

We ended the week with our second game of Distilled and as we suspected: that was a way quicker game! There’s not too much player interaction with just two because you’re then both trying to achieve different goals and have little competition or a hard time getting the ingredients you’re looking for. Nonetheless, I like the game! It has a relaxing length and complexity.

Tonight it’s time for another game of Descent, one of the last scenarios! 😀